What we heard about Lisbon didn’t disappoint: the city, the people (exept taxi-drivers), the night life, the markets, the food-scene. They were more than captivating. Too bad we didn’t spend enough time here at once (our schedule was 3 nights Sintra – 2 nights Lisbon – 5 nights Sao Miquel – 2 nights Lisbon) cause coming in and out for two nights each left us only 2 full days to explore the city. But we loved what we saw and would definitely come back for more.
Wanting to escape the busy city life, we headed to the National Park of Sintra-Cascais right after landing the first time in Portugal, saving its capital for later. After reading too many reviews about the cheating behavior of Portugese taxi-drivers (which is really a shame cause this country could really do better), we decided to book our pick-up in advance to save us all the troubles. After about 45 minute drive, we arrived in the little town of Colares where we rented a small cottage on the beautiful property of a Portugese family. Taking on their advise, we booked the sunset dinner at Bar do Fundo, nicely located on Praia Grande beach which is just a short walk away. Our timing couldn’t have been any better as it was late in the afternoon and the sun was casting its shade on the horizon. The descending walk to the beach we took happened to be the Dinosaur route with supposedly some Dinosaur footprints to be seen. Honestly, we didn’t see any cause we weren’t aware of of their existence, hence we weren’t looking. But we saw something else we liked maybe even better: our dream home. It was a spacious wooden villa on the cliff overlooking the Atlantics, totally secluded from the village life, something we had always imagined our home would look like…. (sigh)…. No, we didn’t take pictures of it, only in our minds.
Dinner was great. Our host even offered to pick us up from the beach to save us the hike back home so everything was exactly how it’s supposed to be: lovely place, beach, sunset, seafoods, good wines, and the two of us. We were very content till the next morning when I suddenly got reeaallly really sick in the stomach (it turned out to be some virus infection). I won’t bother you with all the ugly details, just saying it was a truly horrifying experience being in a secluded Portugese coastal town on a Friday afternoon (which also meant no chance to find any doctor at that hour) where people spoke very little English… Fortunately, our host has a Doctor friend whom they could call at the house and had him come to see me. So all is well that ends well, isn’t it. Only that it took me a couple of days to recover and it kind of ruined the first part of our trip, and my mood to say the least :-(.
Needless to say, with me in bed for 2 whole days we couldn’t spend much time outside. On our last day in the area, we decided to make the most of it and start our vacation all over again so we rented a bike and drive around. We were very glad we did.
Sintra is a very lovely coastal town about 30km away from Lisbon but since we’re not the tourist kind, the only attraction we chose to visit is Quinta da Regaleira with its magnificently designed and well-kept garden. It is truly a magical place that could have come directly from a fairly tale.
One of the (many) things that connects us is definitely our passion for good foods (and our struggle to stay in shape 😉 ). We love a (very) good glas of wine, fresh fruits of the season, local products at farmers’ markets, aged cheese, iberico jamon, a good piece of steak, and lots of seafoods. Anything that satifies our tongues will win its way straight to our hearts. A good meal is one of the most simple pleasures in life that you can really afford every single day, so why not?!
After Saigon, Madrid is probably our second most favorite city for foods simply because you can find great foods everywhere, in every corner of the city. Our absolute highlight of this trip must be our 9-course dinner at LUA. Even though it’s granted 1 Michelin Star, it’s surprisingly affordable (€60 for the menu and €28 for wines pairing), they even put our water and espressos on the house (which most Michelin-starred restaurants normally take advantage of and charge people a lot for) so the whole experience was very pleasant. We enjoyed every course and generally had a very good time.
But you don’t need to visit a famous restaurant to have a good meal in Madrid. In fact, our most favorite place to eat would be in the local Mercados (markets in Spanish), of which there is one in every neighborhood. In Mercado de San Fernando, we had 3 different kinds of tapas from a Spanish lady, 2 dishes of sushi from a Japanese couple, plus wines & beers for a total of €20. What not to love, right?!
We read about La Carmencita being a really popular spot for brunch of the locals so we immediately wanted to check it out. We actually went here the day after our 9-course dinner at LUA, never thought we would feel hungry for foods again but we did ;-).
But the most fun place to eat is definitely the infamous Mercado de San Miguel. It is touristy yes, it is a bit pricey yes, but you also get what you pay for, and have fun eating it side-by-side with hundred hungry others fighting for one of the chairs at the few tables they had there. If you’ve never been there, imagine a giant food hall with stands after stands selling small portions of dishes (called tapas in Spanish) running from local to international for between€2 and €5 each. So firstly you grab a (big) glas of wine at one stand (red wine for him, sangria for me), then go around from one stall to the next (while sipping eagerly on your wines) trying one tapa to the next and before you know it, you’re full and tipsy and beyond happy ;-). It’s really fun. And the foods are very eye-catching as you can see in the pictures followed. We came here twice and loved every second of it.
Less famous is the Mercado de la Cebada, but with much better seafoods choices. Here, you buy seafoods by the kg, have it prepared (simply boiled then springled with sea-salts and olive oil on top) by the vendor, grab the complimentary beer or wine (yes, complimentary because the vendors don’t have the license to sell alcoholic beverages) and eat them right there. It was a long walk for us to get here, but we’re glad we did.
And the cherry on top of our whole culinary experience was this little restaurant right here where we had the most delicious plate of Paella we’ve ever had, anywhere! On Sunday morning, we fought the rain to visit some local center for foods, crafts, and arts we read about. We should have known better (but we obviously didn’t), due to the heavy rain, all food vendors were closed for the day. Having had nothing for breakfast, we were desperately walking around the suburban neighborhood trying to find just anything to satisfy our hungry bellies when we came across this tiny diner. It was a small family-run business, the husband was the barman/ waiter/ everything-doer while his wife running back and fort from the kitchen to bring out new pans with yet another new dishes; the locals coming in and out watching football on the screen, obviously knowing each other by name. This was a very happy ending of our very rainy Madrid story.
This is our second (unsuccesful) effort this year, after Mallorca, to try to escape the bad German weather. Magically, mother winter has managed to follow us to Madrid, leaving Munich very warm and sunny over this long weekend so we ended up baring the cold and the rain the entire time we’re here… (In case you wonder.. No, we didn’t have any luck coming back home because, of course, the bad weather followed us home!).
Upon booking our flights, I started imagining us sitting outside everyday drinking one sangria after another and taking long walks in t-shirt and sandals. But none of that happened, to our (mostly my) despair! Anyway, after swearing like a hundred times (me) and trying to make plan B (him), we think we managed to make the best out of it (we even went to the Museum Reina Sofia though we’re not museum people at all, but what else should we do?!). We spent lots of time in bed ;-), managed to see a bit of the vibrant city (enough to like it), and ate a whole lot. You can really say the foods has saved this trip. Madrid is definitely one of the best city for culinary experience in Europe that we will for sure come back for more.
